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A coalition of businesses in Michigan is coming together to ask lawmakers to add sexual orientation and gender identity to the state's civil rights act.

The Michigan Competitive Workforce Coalition wants to make Michigan the 22nd state to do so, so that it no longer will be legal for an employee to be fired or not hired solely because he or she is gay.

Jim Murray, president of AT&T Michigan and co-chair of the coalition, said he often hears from the Legislature that it does not want to put more regulations or restrictions on businesses. But this is a case in which the business community is uniting to make it clear it supports such a change, he said.

AT&T instituted an internal policy about sexual orientation and gender identity in 1975, Murray said. Many coalition members also have had similar internal policies for years, as have a number of communities.

"The big, national companies have long recognized this as a way to attract job talent," he said.

It's not about attracting gay employees, Murray said, but about being a state that welcomes diversity and one in which younger employees want to work and create businesses.

Business Leaders for Michigan also has called for the law to be changed and included it in the group's updated Michigan Turnaround Plan, released last month.

"Simply put, Michigan needs to grow its population — and people have many choices in a global economy where to live and work," said Kelly Chesney, Business Leaders' vice president of marketing and communications. "We don't want our policies to prevent them from choosing Michigan."

Murray said the public view on this issue has evolved immensely in the past five years, and he hopes lawmakers will act during this legislative session.

Republican leaders have indicated they are open to discussing the issue. But Gov. Rick Snyder has been unwilling to take a position, saying only he would look at it if the Legislature presented it to him.

Murray said he doesn't see that as an unreasonable position.

"It's our job to put it on his radar screen, and that's what we're doing," he said.

Murray has been talking with lawmakers from both sides of the aisle this past year, and he said he is encouraged that no one has closed the door on allowing such a bill to move forward. Murray said he also plans to have an event at the Detroit Regional Chamber's Mackinac Policy Conference this month to encourage support for the issue.

Serving as co-chairs of the coalition along with Murray are Kary Moss, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan, and Brian Walker, CEO of Herman Miller. Murray credited the ACLU with doing a lot of the groundwork on building the coalition and said he then began calling friends in the business community to join.

"Working alongside our state policymakers," Walker said, "leaders in Michigan's business community know that updating the Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act is the right thing to do, it is the smart thing to do, and now is the right time to do it."